It’s easy to imagine these photos of Earth hanging in a modern art exhibition. Taken via satellite, these images are part of a series called Earth As Art from the U.S. Geological Survey and offer “fresh and inspiring glimpses of different parts of our planet’s complex surface.”

Beautiful imagery. Mother Earth really is a great artist! Thank you very much for the link.

As for Andreas Gursky... I'm far more critical of the person who paid $4m for Rhein II than I am of Gursky. He may have sold his soul, but I bet it's a comfortable life, and given half the chance I'd do the same. Now if only anyone would pay that kind of money for my amateurish creations...

As a private recreation, "appropriation" of screenshots from Google Earth can be fun. I used to have a couple on a wall. Central Australia is particularly rich in amazing graphics . A dry landscape manifestly shaped by water.

I don't think I had discovered Google Earth before the rains came in 2009. They have a good collection of historical images, so you can go back and see the changes. Here is how it looks now, from above and at an angle. Who needs a camera?

Absolutely and my comment was not wholly serious. But on Google Earth you can point the "lens" , which is a very wide range zoom, anywhere you want, from any distance and pretty much any angle as long as it is some way above.